


Requiem

by scandalsavage



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst!, Feels, I'm gonna knock you onto the floor, Not In a Good Way - Freeform, So Much Angst!!!!, There Will Be No Sequel!, Time Travel, then kick you when you're down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:21:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21542932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scandalsavage/pseuds/scandalsavage
Summary: He blinks as his brain takes it’s sweet fucking time processing what his eyes are seeing.“So you’re me, huh?” the kid says, rocking back and forth from his heels to his toes like he can’t sit still for three god damn seconds.“That’s pretty cool. You’re huge.”Jason hates him. He hates those stupid fucking curls. He hates that stupid bubbly energy. He hates that fucking earnestness, that eagerness to please. He hates that goddamn costume.Hehatesthe way the kid clings to Bruce’s shadow.Hedespisesthat hand Bruce has on his shoulder.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Dick Grayson & Jason Todd & Bruce Wayne & Damian Wayne
Comments: 160
Kudos: 801





	Requiem

**Author's Note:**

> I did not have the heart to re-read this for editing. As I've said before, I'm a big baby and I just... couldn't. Sorry.
> 
> **UPDATE: There is NOT going to be a sequel. I am really, really, thrilled that you guys love this fic so much you'd like to see more but I just don't have time. I love you guys and I appreciate your support but I've answered this question so many times now and I just, can't answer it again.**
> 
> [My Tumblr](https://scandalsavagefanfic.tumblr.com/)

It doesn't seem to matter how many times life kicks him in the balls while he’s down, Jason never fails to fall into the trap of thinking that at least it can’t get worse.

You’d think he would learn. Everything good that has ever happened to him, every time life starts looking a little brighter… it always turns an especially horrifying flavor of sour.

Like now. Things have been a little tense between Jason and the family. Probably always will be, all things considered. But things have been good. He and Tim have made up and moved on. Had a long one on one with Damian after he came back from the dead that established some tentative bonding. Even had a few moments with Dick that bordered on genuinely brotherly.

And Bruce… things are… better. After the stunt the Joker pulled with his helmet which almost killed him again, things have been… better.

Now there’s this.

A call to come to the cave isn’t the rarity it was not too long ago. But it’s still fairly uncommon.

He blinks as his brain takes it’s sweet fucking time processing what his eyes are seeing.

“So you’re me, huh?” the kid says, rocking back and forth from his heels to his toes like he can’t sit still for three god damn seconds. “That’s pretty cool. You’re huge.”

Jason hates him. He hates those stupid fucking curls. He hates that stupid bubbly energy. He hates that fucking earnestness, that eagerness to please. He hates that goddamn costume.

He _hates_ the way the kid clings to Bruce’s shadow.

He _despises_ that hand Bruce has on his shoulder.

“What the hell is this?” Jason tears his eyes away from the ghost and fixes Bruce with a hard scowl.

“Language,” both of them say simultaneously.

Jason glares at Bruce harder. “What. The _hell_. Is this?”

Bruce snaps his hand away like the kid burned him and has the decency to look a bit sheepish.

“We were fightin’ Chronos with the Justice League!” the kid says, eyes wide and excited like it’s the first time he got presents for Christmas. Jason knows. He remembers that first holiday in the manor. “He laughed at my B and aimed this dumb little gadget at me and here I am!”

Jason’s fighting to maintain his façade of dispassionate practicality but… every time that pre-pubescent voice cracks in excitement it smashes a piece of his soul.

“How do we send him back?” Jason asks, keeping his eyes fixed on Bruce.

A flicker of pain passes through Bruce’s expression. “Jason—”

“B says I should stay here,” the kid says happily. “Says the past is the past and I’m here now so maybe this is where I’m meant to be.”

“Did he,” Jason growls as Bruce’s own expression turns stony and determined.

“Yup. Somethin’ ‘bout a second chance too but that I wouldn’t know about that yet ‘cause it happens later in the timeline. But you know, dontcha? Hey! Maybe we could hang out—”

“No,” Jason says firmly at the same time Bruce says, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

The kid looks up at Bruce with a furrowed brow while Jason glares and stops himself from punching his mentor in the face. It’s one thing for Jason to not want to spend time with his younger self. It’s a whole different thing for Bruce to think it’s a bad idea.

“Woah,” a new, familiar voice sounds from over Jason’s shoulder before either he or… little him can question Bruce further. “You were serious!”

The way past-Jason’s face lights up as he looks beyond Jason is just another stab to the heart.

“Dick!” the kid cries out and practically flies into the other vigilante’s arms.

“Hey Jay!” Dick sounds genuinely excited and when Jason turns to look at him he can see that bright, cheerful grin, so wide it practically splits Dick’s face in two. “Long time no see, brat wonder.”

Jason deflates. Feels his whole body just… slump as his mouth goes dry and deeply unwanted tears sting the corners of his eyes.

 _Long time, no see_? He saw Dick last week. They took down a F-list gang and talked about Dick’s girl trouble. It felt like progress. At the time.

He shouldn’t do it but he risks a glance back at Bruce to find him smiling fondly at sight of little Jason cupping Dick’s face and saying, “You really are an old timer now.”

It’s like he’s not standing right there. Like he’s faded into the background of the cave. Like he’s just another bat on the wall.

They’re too busy cooing over a ghost to notice when he leaves.  
  


* * *

  
He can’t stand this. This blast from the past. This reminder of… of how much things have changed.

Thoughts swirl around in his head. Things he had buried deep so that he could move on. And now they’re being dragged to the surface.

How much better would things have been if he hadn’t died?

Little Jay worships the ground Bruce walks on. That never changed, even as Jason was trudging all over Africa looking for his mother. When he’d found Bruce there, he had felt… whole. Even when he learned that he wasn’t the reason B had traveled so far and that their meeting was a coincide. It’s what kept him going, that desire to make Bruce proud. Even when he was being beaten to death. Even when he realized Bruce wasn’t going to make it. Even when he was choking on smoke, slowly suffocating.

Bruce still hung the moon and all the stars in the sky.

It makes Jason sick to see it now. His stomach flips and churns.

It makes him sick how jealous he is of Little Jay. How viscerally he wants to send the precocious punk back to his own time. Back to face the horror that awaits him.

Because if he goes back, if Little Jason dies… maybe they’ll realize. Maybe they’ll finally do the fucking math. That this kid isn’t a different person. Jason _is_ that kid. The same way Dick is a grown up version of his chandelier-swinging, bad-pun slinging, younger self.

This is just an echo from the past and everyone is treating Little Jay like… like he’s the _real_ Jason. Like he’s been _gone and only just returned_.

Bruce is smitten. He sits on the sidelines smiling while Dick teaches Little Jay new gymnastics moves.

Jason just stands over by where the case with his shredded Robin uniform sat enshrined with the world’s least sentimental plaque reading “A Good Soldier” once stood. It’s since been moved to some top secret storage so that Little Jay doesn’t see it.

Like it never happened.

Because it hasn’t. No to them. It’s like the worst day of Jason’s life has been erased from memory. For everyone but him.

He watches while Bruce explains that Catherine wasn’t Little Jay’s biological mother and that Sheila died in a tragic accident in Africa and that if Jay ever finds himself back in his proper place in the timeline, he should not go after her because she’s a bad person.

Jason watches while Dick soothes the misplaced guilt he’d developed after Jason’s untimely death. While Dick slips into the big brother role he developed for Tim and Damian and smothers Little Jay with all the affection he didn’t get to dole out because of his falling out with Bruce.

Listens as Dick tells Jason he should join the Teen Titans as a permanent member if he ever finds himself back in his proper place in the timeline. He should go on that off world trip with them.

The fact that Little Jay hits it off with Tim doesn’t surprise Jason all that much. But the easy way they interact is still hard to watch. Hard to think about what could have been if they’d met under different circumstances. They’ve come a long way and while Jason doesn’t begrudge Tim his preference for the younger Jason the way he does Bruce and Dick (and even Alfred, who keeps bringing down chili dogs and ice cream every few hours), it still sucks to see all that hard won progress suddenly look small and insignificant.

Only Damian keeps his distance. No doubt feeling a similar sense of… replacement.

God, he really had no idea back then. When he first returned and felt that pain seeing another kid in the Robin costume so soon after he had been killed.

Feels like a cheap facsimile of the rejection he’s facing now.

It’s not fair.

The kid they’re all swooning over _is him_. Him before all the stuff that makes him who he is now.

He didn’t _choose_ to be maimed and murdered.

He didn’t _want_ to _die_.

He didn’t ask to come back. To be thrown in the Pit. To come out changed.

If he’d had a choice, Jason would have never been _this_.

They don’t even realize they’re doing it. Jason knows that. He knows that they’re not _purposefully_ dismissing everything he’s fought for the last few years; digging himself out of the madness, making amends, toeing the line because, like he told them, this family is _important_ to him.

They just never really understood how important.  
  


* * *

  
“You ok, Big Jay?”

Jason freezes mid motion and closes his eyes.

He has avoided the manor for weeks. Can’t stand to be anywhere near any of them with the way they hardly even acknowledge his presence. That’s why he made sure they were all gone today before he came to raid the library. He’s not leaving his first editions here any longer. They’re his. Not Bruce’s. Not Little Jay’s. They belong with him.

“Didn’t think you’d be here,” he grunts as he grabs the book he was reaching for.

“I figured,” the kid says, watching him with sharp eyes. “I’m sure, since you’re me and all, that you got a good reason for not wantin’ to hang out. I just wanted you to know that I’m not sore about it or nothin’, I get it. And I’m sorry for whatever we did back when you weren’t a geezer like Dick to make it hard to be around me.”

Jason heaves a sigh and steps off the ladder.

“It’s not you,” he concedes. Still can’t call the kid by his name. It _his_ name. It was his name when he was that kid, it was his name when he was dead, and it’s his name now. The one and only Jason Todd of this universe. A ghost can’t replace him.

It can’t.

“It’s everyone else.”

“You don’t talk to them much either though.”

“It’s been… a process. It was getting better. Now it’s not.”

Carefully, lovingly, Jason stacks the book on top of the box and tries to decide if the two he’s missing are worth sticking around.

“You mean since I got here, dontcha?”

Jason frowns at him. He does mean that. He just doesn't want to say it out loud. 

“It's not just you. They… don’t talk about you much…” the kid says tentatively.

Scowling, Jason spins on his heel and stalks to the other side of the library for one of the last books, just to have an excuse to turn away.

“Why would they?” He snaps. It’s not the kid’s fault but he’s the only one there and if you can’t bitch at yourself when the pain bubbles over what is even the point of meeting yourself? “Having you around is the perfect excuse to wash their hands of me. Why try mending things with the screwed up adult when you can just pick up with a fresh canvas from before the world went to hell.”

Little Jay is following him as he storms through the shelves and past their favorite places to curl up and escape. And that’s all Jason wants right now. To escape.

“Hey, man. I don’t know what happened but—”

He halts so abruptly, Little Jay almost walks up his back.

“They didn’t tell you what happened?” Jason ask, incredulous.

His younger self looks confused. “Nah. B said is was best if I didn’t know.”

 _Fuck_. It really hasn’t been that long. Five or six years. But so much has happened since then that Jason has forgotten just how deeply, blindly, desperately he used to trust Bruce.

“You can tell me if you wanna,” the kid says looking a little worried despite the offer.

Jason opens his mouth. Then sighs again. What’s the benefit of freaking him out? Nothing. Jason knows he’s a jerk but he’s not that big of one.

“No. You don’t need to know. Bruce is right,” he says. Then mumbles under his breath, “For once.”

A too small hand grabs his elbow as he turns away.

“Tell me. Whatever it is, it’s the reason me an’ B ain’t close anymore, right? An’ the reason Dickface is so clingy?”

Hearing his younger self call Dick ‘Dickface’ makes him smirk. Some things, at least stay the same. He’ll hold onto those things with all his might. Even if the others haven’t given them a second thought since he came back. He’d never blamed them before. He’d been Pit-mad and an asshole. But now? When they’re so eager to separate the kid he was from the man he is just because of a bunch of shit that wasn’t in his control?

Maybe if he’d just been a little bit better… maybe he wouldn’t have died. Maybe he’d still be like this. A little more jaded like any adult but… a lot less broken than he is now.

“I have a right to know,” Little Jay says softly. “And… and you’re the one who went through it so I figure, you’re the one whose got the right to decide if I should know or not. Would you wanna know?”

 _No_ is the first thought that enters Jason’s mind. But then he considers everything and… yeah… he’d want to know. He’s not sure it would actually change anything. He’d always been like Bruce in that way. Figured he could change fate but even if he couldn’t he’s still have to try to save his mom.

Past Bruce is probably desperately searching for a way to bring Little Jay home, he could be snapped back at any moment. The universe probably has a way of self-correcting. Little Jay probably won’t remember anything important if he does get sent back. But on the off chance he goes back to their past with knowledge of their future?

How can Jason pass at a _real_ second chance? For himself. Not a second chance for Bruce and Dick or whoever else. A second chance for Jason Todd to have maybe a slightly less horrible life.

So Jason tells him. All of it.

The kid’s eyes widen in horror as he speaks. But it’s the right thing to do.

They both deserve to know.  
  


* * *

  
“They’re hiding something from you,” Damian says from the shadows.

Jason manages to take it in stride even if his heart practically leapt out of his throat.

“What are you talking about?”

Talking to Little Jay about Sheila and the Joker and the coffin and the Pit had been draining. Jason is tired. He just wants to collapse into his bed.

“Father, Grayson, and Drake went to the League this afternoon.” Damian says it like he’s clarifying but none of that means anything to Jason.

“So what?”

Damian slinks to the opposite side of the counter as Jason starts the water for tea and pulls out a prescription grade muscle relaxer that he downs with a shot of Pepto-Bismol. His stomach has been restless for weeks and he’s started having very small little muscle seizes. Could be any number of old injuries out to get him.

“It was regarding… the presence of your past self.”

Jason stares at him for a minute, measuring him up. They haven’t always gotten along either. But ever since Damian died too they’ve… formed a bond.

Dead birds have to stick together.

“Trying to find a way to send him back?” Jason asks. The League can’t be happy about them fucking up the timeline or whatever. Little Jay is an anomaly. There were always bound to be repercussions.

“I do not believe so,” Damian responds. “They are looking for a way to keep him here. Father is arguing that perhaps the event they mistook as your death was in fact you getting flung into the future.”

Jason snorts out loud. But inwardly anger and hurt roil in his unsettled stomach. He fucking dug himself out of _his own grave_. He broke every single bone in both of his hands getting out of _his own fucking coffin_. He remembers the wet thuds of a crowbar against his body, the loud crunch of bones, throwing his body in front of the woman who betrayed him, the heat of the explosion. He remembers lying in the rubble, gasping for air he couldn’t get, praying to whatever higher power might exist that Bruce would find him before it was too late.

Of course they’d want to pretend none of that ever happened. It’s easier for them. They don’t have to live with the memories. The nightmares.

Little Jay doesn’t have Jason’s baggage.

They stand across from each other for another long moment, silence stretching between them.

“Is that what they’re keeping from me?” Jason asks finally.

“No. There is something else. I do not know. Grayson told me I shouldn’t be troubled with it.”

The water whistles. Jason makes a cup of tea for himself and another for Damian.

They drink together in silence.  
  


* * *

  
Whatever they’re about to say, it isn’t going to be good.

Three grave faces stare back at them.

Jason exchanges a confused look with Little Jay.

Damian is watching from the chair at the batcomputer, obviously not in the loop.

But it’s the way Alfred won’t meet his eyes that sets off the alarm bells in Jason’s mind.

“Jesus, who died?” Jason quips. Not the most tasteful icebreaker he could have gone with, but he still feels like a wounded cat backed into a corner.

Bruce, Dick, and Tim all flinch and cast glances between each other.

“You have to send me back, dontcha?” Little Jay asks, scuffing the sole of a pixie boot against the cave floor and watching his feet.

There is a brief but _extremely_ tense moment between the other three.

Then Bruce says, “N-Not necessarily,” and stops.

Jason has a very bad feeling about this. His stomach does a flip to make sure he notices it and he can’t hold back the little wince. He might actually have to see a doctor soon if this doesn’t let up.

All three sets of blue eyes zero in on the motion.

“It’s… a bit more complicated than that,” Dick hedges carefully. “And there isn’t really a delicate way to say it but—”

“How long have you been ill, Jason?” Tim asks.

Jason glances at him, frowning. “A few weeks. It’ just a little bug. No big deal. Why?”

They all share another look and Jason rolls his eyes.

“Just spit it out, Christ.”

“You’re not sick,” Bruce says. The expression on his face is hard. Cut into stone. Completely unreadable. That has never meant good things for Jason. “The longer Little Jay stays here, the less likely… the less likely he is… well… the less likely he is to become you.”

The blood in Jason’s body freezes and his jaw clamps shut tight. He doesn’t move, couldn’t if he wanted to. All of his muscles are petrified. He can’t even breathe or blink.

He just stares in stunned… anguish. At his father. At his brother. At his friend.

“No.”

Everyone turns to look at Little Jay whose tone exudes horror at the very idea. Everyone except for Jason. He still can’t move. Can’t rip his eyes away from Bruce’s impassive face and what that means.

That he’s made up his mind. He’s convinced himself this is the ‘right thing to do’ and there will be no arguing with it. Because it’s what _he_ wants. Bruce wants _his_ second chance and is willing to sacrifice Jason—again—to get it.

The damn breaks. Jason closes his eyes and takes a shaky breath while the tears slide quietly past his lashes. He’s vaguely aware of Little Jay telling them how wrong they are, that he could be pulled back at any moment, how staying too long will undoubtedly have a ripple effect, how he wants to go back anyway, back to past Bruce who is probably worried sick about him and trying to bring him home.

Jason can’t help but wonder if that’s even true. He may have worshiped Bruce but he knows there were still times when he was difficult. Maybe past Bruce is glad to be rid of him too. Maybe present Bruce is looking at the past through a lens of nostalgia and a sense of obligation.

“Wouldn’t this be better, Master Jason? It’s a fresh start,” Alfred says gently from his side and it feels like a building is falling down on top of him for a third time.

Jason chokes on his sob and tries to breath but he feels like he’s being buried and can’t catch his breath.

But he feels the eyes in the room snap back to him.

“We’re thinking of you Jason,” Dick says as he approaches with caution. “This way, you wouldn’t have to go through all that horrible—"

“I already went through all of that horrible shit, Dick!” Jason shouts at him, finally finding his voice even though it cracks and pitches. His whole body is shaking in rage and betrayal. “This doesn’t change any of that. It just makes all of it pointless! It doesn’t change a single damn thing that happened except make it all for nothing! All this means is that I get screwed again. That I went through hell, and all the painful shit, and all the struggling to come back just for it all to get swept away and forgotten!”

“Jay it’s not—"

The tears are streaming freely down his face now. He slaps Dick’s hand away when he reaches for him with glassy eyes.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Jason snarls, wet and pained and ugly. “All this does is get rid of me in a way that lets you feel good about it. You get rid of the kid who died and came back fucked up, you get rid of that fucking problem child and you get to tell yourselves you did the right thing.”

Jason starts backing away from them. The people he thought were his family.

He tries to make his lip stop trembling and his eyes stop leaking and his breathing stop shaking.

He doesn’t want to leave Little Jay with them. But he’s just going to suddenly… disappear one day, he can’t have the kid with him.

Jason is reasonably sure that Alfred, at least, loved him once. That’s going to have to be enough.

“You’re not thinking about me,” he says and it comes out broken and wounded and weaker than he’s ever heard his voice before. “You’re thinking about yourselves and how much easier it’ll be this way.”

Somehow he manages to find his bike through the hazy hurricane of emotions swirling around inside him. He swings his leg over and fumbles with the ignition. Doesn’t bother with his helmet. He doesn’t need it anymore. The Red Hood is a member of the Bat family and Jason isn’t anymore.

And if he crashes and spills his brains all over the side of the road it’s not like matters anymore.

He had finally managed to make himself believe them when they said they cared. Had tried to be more careful, knowing he had people who would miss him if he died again.

But there is no one who will mourn him now.

“Little wing, wait—”

“Jason, come back!”

“Todd!”

“Master Jason…”

They’ve all stepped forward. But it’s a token gesture. Only Damian has actually followed him. There’s nothing the youngest can do in the face of the unity from the others. He just gives Jason a steady look and a nod. Then throws his arms around Jason’s neck for a split second before rushing out of the cave.

Bruce stands stoically where he’s been since the beginning. He hasn’t moved an inch. There is no sadness or worry or guilt or regret anywhere to be found. He has his hands on Little Jay’s shoulders, making him stay put.

But he watches Jason without a shred of sympathy or affection.

Jason meets the coldly determined gaze of the man he loves so dearly. Searches one final time for something, anything resembling even the barest hint of warmth or sorrow. He combs over every muscle with the baseless hope of a child.

And finds nothing.

He takes a shaky breath and drops his foot heavily on the accelerator.

Maybe he was wrong.

Maybe he never did wake up.

Maybe he never climbed out of his grave.

It’s absurd, after all. That he, Jason Todd; a nobody; a homeless street urchin born to the kind of scum his parents were, would ever be worth resurrection.

Maybe he’s still dead after all.

Maybe his life was just cruel enough, just fucked up enough, to ensure even the afterlife would be miserable.

Maybe he’s just in Hell.


End file.
